New Google's Ads Algorithm-Interest-based advertising

Today(3/11/2009) Google Teams are launching "interest-based" advertising as a beta test on their partner sites and on YouTube. These ads will associate categories of interest — say sports, gardening, cars, pets — with your browser, based on the types of sites you visit and the pages you view. They may then use those interest categories to show you more relevant text and display ads.

They believe there is real value to seeing ads about the things that interest you. If, for example, you love adventure travel and therefore visit adventure travel sites, Google could show you more ads for activities like hiking trips to Patagonia or African safaris. While interest-based advertising can infer your interest in adventure travel from the websites you visit, you can also choose your favorite categories, or tell us which categories you don't want to see ads for. Interest-based advertising also helps advertisers tailor ads for you based on your previous interactions with them, such as visits to their websites. So if you visit an online sports store, you may later be shown ads on other websites offering you a discount on running shoes during that store's upcoming sale.

Their advertisers and publisher partners have been asking us for a long time to offer interest-based advertising. Advertisers need an efficient way to reach those who are most interested in their products and services. And publishers can generate more revenue when they connect advertisers to interested audiences.

This kind of tailored advertising does raise questions about user choice and privacy — questions the whole online ad industry has a responsibility to answer. Many companies already provide interest-based advertising and they address these issues in different ways. For their part, they're launching interest-based advertising with three important features that demonstrate their commitment to transparency and user choice.

• Transparency - they already clearly label most of the ads provided by Google on the AdSense partner network and on YouTube. You can click on the labels to get more information about how they serve ads, and the information they use to show you ads. This year they will expand the range of ad formats and publishers that display labels that provide a way to learn more and make choices about Google's ad serving.
• Choice - they have built a tool called Ads Preferences Manager, which lets you view, delete, or add interest categories associated with your browser so that you can receive ads that are more interesting to you.
• Control - You can always opt out of the advertising cookie for the AdSense partner network here. To make sure that your opt-out decision is respected (and isn't deleted if you clear the cookies from your browser), they have designed a plug-in for your browser that maintains your opt-out choice.
  

To find out more about what Google is doing in this important area, please visit:Public Policy blog and Privacy Center.

Keyword advertising has been so successful because it's useful to users, advertisers and publishers — everyone's interests are aligned. They believe that interest-based ads will create the same virtuous cycle, by giving users more relevant ads, while generating higher returns for advertisers and publishers.

Reference from: Post of Susan Wojcicki, VP, Product Management "Making ads more interesting"

Reference Site : Google

Judge dismisses Google lawsuit

By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

Google's Street View has been criticised on several occasions

A legal claim by a Pittsburgh couple that Google's Street View feature violated their privacy has been thrown out by a federal judge.

Christine and Aaron Boring sued the search giant after photos of their home appeared on the free mapping program.

The couple accused Google of privacy violation, negligence, trespassing and unjust enrichment.

In her ruling, Judge Amy Reynolds Hay said the Borings "failed to state a claim under any count".

"We are pleased the judge agreed the suit was without merit," said Google in a statement to the BBC.

Street View displays street level, 360-degree photographs of areas taken by specially equipped Google vehicles.

Failure

The photographs at the centre of the lawsuit, launched last year, were taken at the foot of Mr and Mrs Boring's driveway and shows their house, a pool area and detached garage. Signs marked the road as private.

The suit alleged that Google's Street View had caused Mr and Mrs Boring "mental suffering" and diluted the value of their home.

Google removed the offending pictures after the lawsuit was filed

"While it is easy to imagine that many whose property appears on Google's virtual maps resent the privacy implications, it is hard to believe that any - other than the most exquisitely sensitive - would suffer shame or humiliation," Judge Amy Reynolds Hay of US District Court for Western Pennsylvania wrote in her 12-page decision.

The judge also suggested that the Borings' lawsuit made it possible for more people than ever to view the picture of their home.

"The Borings do not dispute that they have allowed the relevant images to remain on Google Street View, despite the availability of a procedure for having them removed from view," wrote Judge Reynolds Hay.

"Furthermore, they have failed to bar others' access to the images by eliminating their address from the pleadings, or by filing this action under seal," she said.

The publicity has actually perpetuated dissemination of the Borings' name and location, and resulted in frequent re-publication of the Street View images, the judge concluded.

"The plaintiffs' failure to take readily available steps to protect their own privacy and mitigate their alleged pain suggests to the Court that the intrusion and that their suffering were less severe than they contend," wrote Judge Reynolds Hay.

The Borings had sought $25,000 (£17,700) in damages.

'Removal tools'

Google said the company respects individual privacy and provides ways for that privacy to be maintained.

"We blur identifiable faces and licence plates in Street View and we offer easy-to-use removal tools so users can decided for themselves whether or not they want a given image to appear.

Photos of real world locations are tied to maps

"It is unfortunate the parties involved decided to pursue litigation instead of making use of these tools," said Google in its statement.

Privacy concerns following the launch of Street View in 2007 prompted Google to start blurring faces of people caught in the photographs.

The company had argued earlier in response to the lawsuit that "today's satellite-image technology means that even in today's desert complete privacy does not exist."

"Privacy claims are not easy to prove," said Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre.

"One of the challenges is showing what's the damage, what's the harm. But Google is more at risk here because there is always the possibility someone might prevail in one of these cases, so I don't think the issue is resolved in terms of Google."

Privacy fears over Google tracker

Google has announced a new feature that allows users to share their locations among a chosen network of friends.

The "opt-in" Latitude service uses data from mobile phone masts, GPS, or wi-fi hardware to update a user's location automatically.

Users can also manually set their advertised location anywhere they like, or turn the broadcast off altogether.

The service has raised a number of security concerns, as many users may not be aware that it is enabled.

Latitude is based on Google's My Location feature that has been in place since last year.

The new interface and social networking element makes Latitude similar to a number of websites such as Loopt and Brightkite that make use of the location data of a network of friends.

Users can set the service to update automatically using the best location data it can obtain from the phone's hardware, set the location to display at city level only, or to not send any location data at all.

Locations are shared only between people who mutually agree to share them, and users can also see their Latitude friends' locations on a computer.

Privacy concerns

Read Darren Waters's blog on Latitude

Google says it has built the service from the ground up with security and privacy issues in mind, and that the service only stores the last known location of a given user.

However, privacy watchdog Privacy International argues that there are opportunities for abuse of the system for those who may not know that their phone is broadcasting its location.

Privacy International director Simon Davies gives the example of employers who might give phones to employees with Latitude enabled.

"With Latitude, Google has taken steps toward privacy that it has hitherto not taken," Mr Davies told BBC News.

"The problem is that they launched the services without allowing all phones to be notified."

Google admits that the notification service is currently only available for BlackBerry users.

"We have implemented a feature on the BlackBerry version of the software to display several notifications (i.e. pop-up messages) to a device which informs the user that his or her phone's location is being shared," said a Google spokesperson.

"We hope to extend this to other versions of the software soon," the spokesperson added, noting that all platforms should be supported within a week's time.

For Mr Davies, the issue is principally a philosophical one about the nature of privacy.

"I have absolutely no doubt, as a tech-lover, about the utility of this as extremely beneficial," he said.

"But it will be destroyed by privacy if the companies don't get it right."
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From BBC

What's with Google's new mini icon?

What's the most recognised logo in the world? It would probably be Google's if only they could stick to one. Yet as the world's most popular search engine tries out a new favicon, Craig Smith says the old branding rulebook is being rewritten.

It's not the size that matters, it's how often you use it. So the thinking goes at Google, which has just revealed the design of its latest favicon - the tiny logo that shows any web user, on any web browser, anywhere in the world, precisely whose internet "real estate" they are currently residing upon.

An example of a favicon can be seen at the top of this page (so long as you are using an up-to-date enough web browser). Just in front of the URL http://news.bbc.co.uk/... there is a small BBC logo. That 16x16 pixel square is the size of the favicon in question, if not the scope.

Google's changing masthead 1998 (top) and now

Now consider that, at the website owner's discretion, the logo appears on every single one of its pages that the world's web population loads. For Google that amounts to upward of 1, 200 million individual searches. Every day.

Add to that its Google News, Google Images, mobile search and multitude of other online services. Suddenly the favicon takes on an importance that belies its fingernail-sized dimensions, and the motivation for Google to roll out its third design in less than a year, as it attempts to get its favicon right, becomes clear.

Google's journey to this latest multi-coloured graphic identity charts a course through some of the unique challenges of favicon design, and through those of logo design in general. The world's leading search engine, whose very name has been adopted as the generic term for finding pages on the web, has achieved web domination without ever having had an actual logo.

Magic Eye style

Think of Google visually and you will probably picture the letters that make up the word Google, picked out in bright primary colours. In the designer's lexicon, rather than being a logo, Google has a logotype - albeit a very successful one around which it is famed for creating ever-changing topical "doodle" themes.

DESIGN A FAVICON What makes a good favicon? Here, BBC designer Mick Ruddy suggests four key points 1. Keep it simple ­- use basic shapes 2. Use a limited colour palette 3. Avoid fine detail or lots of gradients 4. Keep it sharp ­- keep an eye on blurring Design a favicon for us

What Google has so far lacked is the sort of universally recognised icon that identifies a Mercedes-Benz car at distance or, in technology terms, the Apple computer or Yahoo web page - all logos that these brands use as their own favicon, not least because they fit the diminutive dimensions. The word Google, by contrast, would not reduce and still be legible.

Cue the new Google favicon - a rainbow of differently shaped blocks. A bit like one of those "hidden" Magic Eye pictures popular in the 1990s, not everyone will immediately see that the Google favicon blocks interlock to form a "g" shape.

That hardly matters. The design makes best use of favicon limitations and is a marked evolution of Google's previous iterations - a small blue "g" on a white background since June of last year, and a capital "G" before that.

While the old branding rulebook would discourage such regular, radical overhauls, reeking as it does of indecisiveness and inconsistency, in the digital world such rules are temporary, at best.

Steve Plimsoll, of brand consultancy FutureBrand, says the traditional rules on corporate identity are starting to look a little tired.

Mighty morphin logos

"Logos are set to become fluid, ever-changing, customisable, even personalised entities and Google is the first global brand that understands this," says Mr Plimsoll, who is head of digital.

"We are going to have to get used to the idea of our brands changing frequently, and when we do, every three months will seem like the dark ages."

Remind you of anything?

If you don't like the new look, then, you can wait or, more proactively, send the company your own design. When Google unveiled the small 'g' last year, the company's head of search products & user experience, Marissa Mayer, hinted at a transitory solution, saying "by no means is the one you're seeing our favicon final; it was a first step to a more unified set of icons" and inviting users to contribute ideas.

The new favicon is based on a design sent in by André Resende, a computer science undergraduate student at the University of Campinas in Brazil.

It may sound indecisive, even amateurish, but the fast-changing nature of Google's digital world dictates it. While the billions of pages of Google's branded "real estate" is the headline figure, its real focus is to keep pace with users' mobile phones, computer task bars and web bookmarks in such a way as to keep directing them effortlessly back to Google - using the favicon as their guide.

For the world's biggest search engine, the world's smallest signpost is one of its most valuable assets.

Craig Smith is a marketing author and editorial director at publishing agency Velo

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You've read about Google's new favicon - now design one yourself - either a personal favicon or one to represent the Magazine, and send it to us.

It's easy to do. You can either use one of the many online favicon generators such as favicon.cc, DynamicDrive, Favicon Generator and Galleryor Antifavicon, or just shrink an image down to 16x16 pixels.

Don't forget to think about what makes a good icon at such a small size - see Mick Ruddy's tips in the factbox near the top of this story

Once you've got your favicon - e-mail it to us at yourpics@bbc.co.uk with the subject line "favicon"

Include some personal details - your name, where you are from etc. And a brief sentence about your favicon. We'll publish some of them on this page later.

Some of your Magazine favicon designs, so far:

Tried to incorporate the BBC reddish news colour. It's supposed to show a "magazine" with the covers forming the letters N (for news!) and M (for...oh you can figure it out!). The background is transparent, so would show white on a browser bar.
Michael Fordyce, Sheffield

Keeping in line with the existing BBC favicon design this version will keep users content that they are looking at the same site. It also uses a simple design for easy recognition.
James Battersby, West Moslesey, Surrey

You said "keep it simple" so here's the standard BBC favicon with 'MAG' written underneath on the Magazine's masthead colour.
Karl Johnson, Thetford, Norfolk

I've opted for a colourful reworking of the BBC initials against a black background - vaguely inspired by the BBC test card.
Tom Kennedy

Tried to incorporate your masthead colours and used the same font as the BBC logo. I think it's rather fetching!
Carl Dersley, Ipswich

Grabbed the banner colours and replicated their structure from the page. Added an 'M'.
Steve, Woking

This uses the design of the site and the site's main colours (black, dark red, teal, white).
Leo, Milton Keynes

Although it chops off some of the BBC logo, it is much clearer I think, and has your corporate news colours. It also makes better use of the footprint. I use it to replace the BBC one in my Firefox browser.
Stephen Daniels, Edinburgh

Just a few minutes "doodling" after reading the article - does it fit the bill?
Gill Jennings, London

Quite simple but effective, I guess...
Guilherme Silva, Porto, Portugal

Wow, there's not much room to work with. I tried to incorporate a folded corner (to represent a magazine leaf), but it didn't work.
Steve, Birmingham

I used the page graphics and layout to design this simple icon, and added the BBC favicon to the black space.
Diane Bay, Wheaton, IL

Here is my take on a favicon for the Magazine section. It seemed pretty obvious to me as to what elements you have in your brand - white text on blue, rotated M in another blue - so used these to make something very simple but hopefully encapsulating all your branding.
Mark, Exeter

I wanted to show someone using their hands to open the BBC and see inside.
Steven, Coventry